Revision as of 21:50, 22 February 2009

Contents

Getting Sponsored

Get a Fedora Account

You should already have a Fedora Account or you did not follow the Join the Fedora Package Collection Maintainers Guide. Please read the guide first and come back here later. If you do not want to become a package maintainer in the Fedora Project, you do not need to be sponsored.

Why Get Sponsored?

Getting sponsored allows anyone interested to become a Fedora maintainer and get direct commit and upload access to their proposed software packages. We require people to get sponsored before getting this access to Fedora to ensure that they have sufficient knowledge to maintain Fedora packages properly including understanding of the Fedora packaging guidelines by for example, reviewing other packages.

Sponsorship model

The Fedora package submission process requires that new package submitters be sponsored before they are granted access to the 'packager' group. Members of this group are able to own packages and to check in changes to packages which you own. It is the person who needs to be get sponsored and not the packages. Note that sponsorship is not automatic and requires that you find a willing sponsor. A sponsor will assist you with some aspects of packaging and the submission process but will expect you to be able to handle the bulk of this process. Because of this, it is necessary for you to show that you have an understanding of the process and of the packaging guidelines.

The best ways for you to illustrate your understanding of the packaging guidelines are to submit quality packages and to assist with package reviews. Prospective sponsors will want to see what reviews you have done, so go ahead and tell them when you submit your first package review request and add comments to your open review ticket with information about your activities. If you like, you can include other information about your involvement with the community that you think might help the sponsors in their decision. If you are an upstream author of the package you are submitting, or if you are active in the community that surrounds it, please say so. If you can line up one or more existing Fedora contributors who are willing to maintain the package along with you, even if they are not sponsors, please indicate that as well.

Basically, the more information that you make available, the quicker you will find a sponsor.

Note that if you follow the proper procedure when submitting your first review request, including the all-important blocking of the FE-NEEDSPONSOR ticket, then all of the sponsors will be able to see your sponsorship request. Note also that you should not submit your sponsorship request to the account system until after you have been given the go-ahead from a sponsor.

To find a sponsor go to the (list of packager sponsors) and look for one that could sponsor you. The list of sponsors is only visible to contributors with a Fedora Account.

Provenpackagers

Provenpackagers are members of the 'provenpackager' group. In addition to the rights granted to members of 'packager', provenpackagers are able to commit changes to packages they do not own or maintain. It is possible for a maintainer to deny access to provenpackagers for his particular package, but the vast, vast majority of packages can be changed by provenpackagers.

To become a provenpackager, you must ask an existing provenpackager to sponsor you into the group. This is a much less involved process than initial sponsorship. Usually just asking is all it will take. Most maintainers probably will not need to be provenpackagers, so you shouldn't apply for this access unless you need it.

Reviewing Packages

It is true that before you have been sponsored you will not have the ability to assign review tickets to yourself, but you can still make comments and the quality of those comments can go a long way towards convincing a sponsor. They will also help out the other reviewers, which will be much appreciated. Please restrict yourself to only make comments and add yourself to the CC list, until you are familiar with other possible changes of a bug's status. Please do not change the fedora-review flag as this may make it difficult for other reviewers to tell that the package still needs a final review.

Reviews follow the review guidelines . Note that it's not strictly necessary for you to work through the entire checklist, but please do as much as you can; the more you indicate that you understand, the better your chances of being sponsored.